Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast A Creative Excuse

Kat Kinnick is back on A Creative Excuse for her third solo appearance, and we get into it. We talk process over product, how the animals in her paintings sit at the edge of cuteness and brutality, and how the desire to connect, to nature, to people, to the things we don't say, runs underneath all of it.

Haley Greenfeather English is an artist and educator born and raised in Tiwa territory. Their paternal family is from Red Lake Nation and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and their maternal family is of European/Irish descent. Their art is an extension of their love of storytelling. It is something that deeply connects them to being and understanding what it means to be human. Through collections of loose drawings, written journals, and sentimental random objects, English visually brings pieces of stories together. English incorporates portraits of their family, warped perspectives, historical narratives, Indigenous and medicinal plants, cigarette smoking spirits, insects and animals.

Kate Wood (voted most likely to have bangs for her entire life) is an interdisciplinary artist working predominantly in painting/illustration, and paper mache sculpture. Kate considers herself a play-based artist whose works explores themes of relationship, body language and communication, family, and the point at which personal experience transcends identity and becomes collective consciousness. The daughter of a school teacher and an archaeologist, story and artifact became loci for Kate’s experience of and orientation to the world beginning in early childhood. Using a cast of glyphs rooted in archetype and mythology, Kate constructs visual narratives that invite and encourage viewers to have fun finding and experiencing themselves within the work. Kate grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and currently lives with her family in a rural mountain village on the High road to Taos.

Juana Estrada Hernández is a Mexican artist and Assistant Professor of Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design. Born in Luis Moya, Zacatecas, Mexico, she moved to the United States at the age of seven and grew up as an undocumented immigrant — an experience that became central to her artistic practice. She received her MFA in Printmaking from the University of New Mexico and her BFA in Printmaking from Fort Hays State University.

Estrada Hernández's work draws on Mexican folklore, Hispanic cultural traditions, and her family's intergenerational migration stories, with a particular focus on the social and political realities facing Hispanic migrant communities. She is a DACA recipient and self-described "DACA-mented" artist, and her prints speak with both intimacy and urgency to the experience of living, creating, and belonging across borders. Her printmaking — primarily lithography and intaglio — is luminous, narrative, and dynamic, with a touch of the surreal.

She has exhibited across the United States, Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Poland. Her work is held in several collections including the Janet Turner Print Museum, Chicago Printmakers Collaborative, Zygote Press Archives, Laval University, and Engramme, National Library and Archives of Québec.

Printmaker and educator Julianna Kirwin presents a window installation combining hand-pulled prints with the woodblocks used to make them. Informed by her experiences along the Camino Real, the work highlights printmaking as a bridge between cultures, revealing process, lineage, and Pan-American identity through image and material.

Moira Garcia is a New Mexican-Chicana multidisciplinary artist, educator, and cultural practitioner whose work bridges ancestral knowledge and contemporary visual language. A native of New Mexico, she holds a BFA in Studio Arts with a focus in printmaking from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MA in Latin American Studies with concentrations in Art History and Indigenous Studies from the University of New Mexico. Garcia’s art draws deeply from Nahuatl language, Mesoamerican cosmologies, and personal experiences, using symbol, color, and metaphor to explore themes of identity, memory, and cultural continuity. Her practice moves fluidly across printmaking, painting, fiber art, and mixed media, creating multilayered narratives that honor ancient visual traditions while engaging present-day concerns. Recent work, including her exhibition Xochiyotl: Florescence at Hecho a Mano, probes the essence of floral life as a metaphor for transformation and resilience. Garcia also teaches, advocates for art as social change, and champions indigenous and borderland perspectives in contemporary art.

Sam Hawley and Oskar Petersen artists live and work in their hometown of Albuquerque. They describe their way of living as a process of constant collaboration: "We both end up living among our work, for better or worse, talking about it over dinner and coffee and as we watch TV," they write. "We are very fortunate to spend our time discussing whether or not a goose should have teeth in a painting or what a certain palette is evoking."

Pearl Hesselden is the founder of the Ranch Residency in La Madera, NM. The Ranch Residency offers a distinctive opportunity for artists to immerse themselves in the unique landscape of the La Madera Mountain Range and their own art practices. "Our mission is to offer a respite where artists can explore, experiment, and devote time to their practice in a setting that is both inspiring and nurturing.” www.ranchresidency.com

Mirel Fraga and Alfonso Barrera are a creative couple based in Oaxaca whose practices intersect across drawing, printmaking, and independent publishing. Barrera, originally from Mexico City, works in graphite, charcoal, oil, and printmaking, weaving together human–nature relationships, art history, and fantastical imagery; his work has exhibited in Mexico, the U.S., and Japan. Fraga, from Puebla, moves fluidly between illustration, graphic arts, and mural painting, often centering nature, cosmos, and feminist themes. Together they co-founded Polvoh Press, an editorial project dedicated to small-edition artist books and printmaking, reflecting their shared commitment to experimentation, community, and the handmade.

Born and raised in the border city of El Paso, TX, George Rodriguez creates highly ornamented, figurative ceramic sculptures, often underlined by a connection to the sociopolitical issues the artist explores. Rodriguez holds a BFA from the University of Texas El Paso and an MFA in ceramics from the University of Washington, Seattle. His world curiosity grew as a recipient of a Bonderman Travel Fellowship where he traveled the world through most of 2010. George was featured on PBS Craft in America "Storytellers" episode and has created a large public sculpture for the new Kansas City Airport which opened March 2023. George currently resides in Philadelphia and teaches at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University.

This episode is with curator Martha Traer of our current exhibition Sound & Vision and two artists in the show, Kat Kinnick & Eliza Lutz. They talk about the process of turning a song into a piece of visual art and the influence of music in their creative lives. 

For this show, each artist was asked to choose a song and create an 11 x 14-inch piece of work inspired by the music. With artists working in a wide variety of media and styles, Sound and Vision is a kaleidoscope of memory embedded in music. 

Listen to the playlist of all the songs chosen here.

b.brown grew up in Los Angeles and New York City, and is currently settled in Santa Fe. Her work history includes dance, film, design and production ceramics. Dance formed her early years as an artist; she began studying at age 5 and continued a rigorous practice over the next 17 years. Although her serious aspirations to make dance her life's work led to enrollment and training in some of New York’s most prestigious institutions, she did not feel at home within the narrowly defined criteria for "fitting in” that was de rigueur at the time. When she turned her attention to clay, her love of honing technique and experiencing communion via somatic “dialoging” led to discovering an innate understanding of the material, and a propulsion to know more. Like dance before it, clay afforded brown a means to explore and experiment - to investigate seemingly-at-odds pairings such as discipline and rule-breaking, methodology and abandon, refinement and elaboration. Now, some 30+ years later - and having ridden the many and various rides that life has thrown her way - brown’s unwavering studio practice is both prolific in creative articulation and rich with offerings.

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and surrounded with the arts from an early age, Daniel McCoy (Muscogee Creek/Potawatomi) was welcomed into a household of Artisans, Farmers, Music and Subculture.

McCoy began entering Native Art Competitions at age fifteen under the direction of Cherokee Artist, Mary Adair while attending boarding school in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. He received his formal Art Training at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. At the Institute, Daniel McCoy jr. was able to study and work with some of the best Native Artists in the field.

Jerome T. Nakagawa is a Navajo and Japanese silversmith and photographer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in December 2022, majoring in Studio Arts with an emphasis on jewelry and metals. Nakagawa has completed jewelry-based apprenticeships with Keri Ataumbi of Ataumbi Metals and Cody Sanderson. Raised in Hayward, California, Nakagawa earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004. He completed his graduate-level photojournalism coursework at the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University in 2007. Prior to enrolling at IAIA, Nakagawa worked as a photojournalist for over ten years and was the inaugural recipient of the Sandy Colton Memorial Award at the Eddie Adams Workshop. His photojournalism was published in the Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, Miami Herald, Arizona Republic, Time Magazine, and Sports Illustrated.

UPDATE: As of 1/20/2026, Congress has approved fiscal year 2026 funding for IAIA after proposed elimination.

Terran Last Gun, Saakwaynaamah’kaa (Last Gun), (b. 1989, Browning, MT) is an enrolled citizen of the Piikani (Blackfeet) of Montana and a visual artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Piikani Nation is one of four nations that make up the Blackfoot Confederacy, collectively called the Niitsitapi (Real People). Born and raised on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, Last Gun works across media to explore color, form, and abstraction. Drawing inspiration from land, cosmos, cultural narratives, and experiences, Last Gun pushes the boundaries of Piikani modernism.

He has exhibited at venues including the Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Snowmass Village, CO); Glacier Art Museum (formerly the Hockaday Museum of Art) (Kalispell, MT); Missoula Art Museum (Missoula, MT); Bates Museum of Art (Lewiston, ME); Newberry Library (Chicago, IL); The 8th Floor (New York, NY); Museum of the Plains Indian (Browning, MT); Contemporary at Blue Star (San Antonio, TX); and the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (Santa Fe, NM), among others.

Last Gun received his BFA in Museum Studies and AFA in Studio Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2016. He has received awards from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation 2024 Biennial Award, First Peoples Fund 2020 Artist in Business Leadership Fellowship, Santa Fe Art Institute 2018 Story Maps Fellowship, and the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture 2016 Goodman Aspiring Artist Fellowship. Last Gun was named one of the 2022 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now in Southwest Contemporary.

Kat Kinnick’s work has always fostered a profound connection to nature, and the weight of humanity’s destructive impact can feel crushing. She notices how it can paralyze her and others in her community: “I want this work to help them feel less alone, and I hope that it can uplift others that are struggling, and be a breath of fresh air, awakening myths and stories inside themselves that they can then share with us all,” she says. 

Benjamin Muñoz (b. 1993) is a Dallas-based multi-disciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, installation, and monumental printmaking. Muñoz grew up in the vibrant Chicano culture of Corpus Christi, Texas, which boasts the country's largest Day of the Dead celebration, lowriders shows, and unique food culture. The middle child of three artist brothers, Muñoz found his voice by reflecting on his heritage, upbringing, and current surroundings. Muñoz attended Del Mar Community College in Corpus Christi for two years before the combination of “a young man’s arrogance” and starting his family gave him the confidence and circumstances to leave school and begin his journey as a professional artist. His first big break came when he was awarded the city’s biggest grant to create the exterior of the local arts center. In 2018, he relocated to Dallas. His work can be found in the public collections of The Mexic-Arte Museum, The National Museum of Mexican Art, The Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum of Art, The Blanton Museum of Art, and extensive private collections, including the largest collection of Latino art in the world belonging to Gilberto Cardenas. Muñoz has been honored with 17 solo exhibitions throughout the United States and was included in Soy de Tejas, a traveling survey of Texas-born Latino artists.

Annalise creates her finely crafted prints by hand from start to finish, carving wood, etching metal, dyeing paper, and using manual printing presses to create multiple originals. Each piece is printed on the finest archival papers using oil based inks and hand dyed papers she produces in her studio. Annalise operates as a self publisher out of Austin, Texas and travels frequently across the country as a visiting artist and speaker and to publish prints with esteemed print shops.  

Annalise begins each of her pieces with a drawing and a love for technical and artistic experimentation. She meticulously carves wood blocks with hand tools or carefully scribes into wax on the surface of a copper plate that is then dipped into an acid bath. Once these matrices are complete, sometimes after months of carving or a dozen dips in the acid bath, she begins her color development. Starting from color swatches she dips and tests in her studio, she dyes in bulk sheets of thin yet strong mulberry paper in a wide variety of colors and patterns. These sheets of dyed paper are then carefully cut out and applied to the wet ink on each woodcut or etching during the printing process, at which time the ink, papers, and pressure all combine to create the prints you see here.  

For nearly a decade, Annalise worked in fine art print publishing, curation, collections, and gallery management at Flatbed Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Austin, Texas. She is currently the Matting and Framing, and Housings Preparator at the Blanton Museum of Art. Annalise is a founding board member of the annual PrintAustin festival, and is a guest lecturer and visiting artist at Universities across the country, including recent visits to Oklahoma University, OK, Edinboro University, PA, and CUNY Staten Island, NY. She’s been a recent guest lecturer at UT Austin, Ohio State University, IL, and Pratt, NYC.  

Recent exhibition venues include Paradigm Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, Morgan Paper Conservatory, Cleveland, OH, Mesh Gallery, Chicago IL, Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minneapolis, MN, Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, CT, Elisabet Ney Museum, Austin, TX, and Till Richter Museum, Buggenhagen, Germany.  Annalise was awarded the title of Creative Ambassador of Visual Arts in 2019 by the City of Austin. 

Annalise’s ongoing and largest series to date, Carrying Things From Home, is comprised of eight 3x5.5 foot hand-dyed chine collé woodcuts. 

This is a re-release of episode 14 from 2019 with Les LePere. Les passed away last August and we just found out about it. We thought it would be fitting to re-release the episode.

The following was published by Spokesman-Review on Aug. 18, 2024.

He always had a good story to tell: "stop me if I've already told you this, but even if I have, a good story is worth hearing again". His story was often accompanied by a pencil drawing to help expand the narrative.

After taking a photo of Leslie in his studio, Del Lusk notated the print with: "Out in the rolling wheat country near Harrington Washington, Leslie LePere lives and works at the job he was born to do, tending the 3000-acre wheat ranch that has been in the family for 80 years. He enjoys the work and the challenge. He calls it playing in the dirt. But in his off hours he'll be in his studio in the home his parents built, living his alternate life as an artist, playing with pencils, probably colored ones."

In the autumn of 1964 "I started early, left the farm, took my pencils and went to WSU".* While there Leslie met fellow art student Ken Cory. The pair adopted the moniker "Pencil Brothers". They engineered elaborate art-related shenanigans that produced laughs as well as awe. Their serious art collaborations were often champlevé enamel and pencil drawings. They produced pins, light switch plates, frames, belt buckles, necklaces, and a set of silver self-portrait salt and pepper shakers, to name a few.

Leslie earned a Master's degree in fine arts and headed north. "All signs pointed clearly to a fork in road".* He took the road to Seattle, where he began his series of 4 x 4 drawings in ink and colored pencil, completing over 50. All of his work was intricate, provocative, and told stories. He illustrated numerous posters and pamphlets including the first Seattle Bumbershoot poster, Fat Tuesday festival in Seattle, an Olympic Music Festival, a musical event at Chateaux St. Michelle, and covers for the Seattle Weekly. He also began creating book covers for Tom Robbins, beginning with "Still Life with Woodpecker".

"Followed the dotted line, collected objects, worked magic."* in 1981 Leslie returned to the family farm to work with his father, uncles and cousins. He farmed by day, made drawings at night. He illustrated posters for Inland Craft Warnings, a Spokane Symphony concert in Manito Park, concerts at the Mielke barn, a cover for a community cookbook (Harrington Cooks), labels for Buckeye Beans, Aunt Patsy's Pasta, Four Seasons Coffee and later Roam Roasters, the Electric Hotel, the Post & Office and countless letterheads, logos and stationery for friends and businesses. In 2013 he had a retrospective of his work at the Jundt Art Museum on the Gonzaga University campus. He partnered with his dear friend Charlie King to establish Sandy Parr, where they collaborated to design commemorative pins, and ball markers for golf tournaments and courses, and special events such as the grand reopening of the Fox theater and an Inland Craft Warnings anniversary.

In 1990 he met Eva Simova. They enjoyed redecorating the farmhouse together, cooking elaborate meals, laughing with abandon, and traveling. They travelled to Eva's birthplace in the Czech Republic to be married and wandered around Italy together. Their travels inspired many pieces in his later series of 6 x 6 works. Eva died in 2011.

Ten years ago, Leslie retired from farming, leaving the working of the family farm to great friends and great farmers, Ron and Linda Mielke. This gave him more time to hone his cooking skills, enjoying time in his country kitchen cooking with, and for friends.

Poor health slowed his studio and kitchen work down the past year but note that the day before entering the hospital for the final time, for his own enjoyment, he made a batch of manicotti, from scratch.

Many generous Harrington friends gave their time and transportation to help him in his last months of living at home. Some of his closest friends travelled from far and wide to see him when it became apparent, he was declining. The final 2 months of his life were spent in the home of his niece, Chemyn Kodis, his time guided under the expert support of Hospice of Spokane.

His way with words, his ability to hold a pencil, enjoy a good meal and give a firm handshake stayed with him to his final day.

His ashes were scattered on the family farm, with all the airdales he had so dearly loved.

Leslie William LePere was born on May 26, 1946, to Alice and Eldon LePere, joining his sister Louise to complete their family.

Carson Elliott (b. 1976) lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife, son and two dogs (Milo and Sopaipilla).  He prefers to work with colored pencils, graphite, pen and ink, acrylic and watercolor.  Carson creates images of fantastical memories, psychedelic landscapes and phantasmal beings.  These dreamlike images explore ideas about time, space, memory, distance and the natural world.  He received a Bachelors of Fine Art from the University of North Texas and enjoys riding his bike long distances.

Zahra grew up in two deserts which vary drastically and have many similarities in culture. One close to the sea (Kuwait), the other close to the mountains (New Mexico). She studied the visual arts in France, and continues various pursuits to further educate herself. She currently lives in the Barelas neighborhood of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and works in her studio at the Harwood Art Center, where she incorporates Kuwaiti tendencies into her daily life. Her 2022 children's book, Where Butterflies Fill the Sky has topped many year-end book lists including that of the New York Times, NPR, and the Chicago Public Library. Zahra is the 2022 Society of Illustrators’ Dilys Evans Founders Award Winner and a recipient of the United Nations Minority Artist Award on Statelessness.

Brandon Maldonado was born in 1980 in Denver, Colorado and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico where he grew up on the graffiti art of his barrio surroundings. He rejected the academically painted southwestern landscapes which seemed a far cry from the graffiti filled streets of his personal reality. However, the culturally rich environment of New Mexico made a lasting impact on Maldonado's work, which often explores themes associated with Mexican culture. Being primarily of Northern New Mexico descent, Brandon has a fascination with the history and culture of the land, as well as its living and historical ties to the story of Mexico and its mestizo legacy.

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Brandon's work can be viewed at hechoamano.org/artist/brandon-maldonado-nm-b-1980

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Intro music by watson. Listen and download all albums free here: watson.bandcamp.com

Jamison Chās Banks is a multi-disciplinary artist who creates films, paintings, performances, and installations. His works often explore the history of war and territorial expansion, both literal and psychological. Banks appropriates and alters symbols employed in propaganda and popular culture and redeploys them in contexts that subvert their original meanings. He usually begins with an area of investigation that spawns a series of interrelated artworks in different media.

Grammy-nominated pianist Adam Tendler is a recipient of the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists, the Yvar Mikhashoff Prize, and "currently the hottest pianist on the American contemporary classical scene" (Minneapolis Star Tribune), a "remarkable and insightful musician" (LA Times), and a "relentlessly adventurous pianist" (Washington Post) "joyfully rocking out at his keyboard" (New York Times). A pioneer of DIY culture in classical music, at age 23 Tendler performed solo recitals in all fifty states as part of a grassroots tour called America 88x50, the subject of his acclaimed memoir, 88x50. He has gone on to become one of classical music's most recognized and celebrated artists, commissioning major works from composers as diverse as Christian Wolff and Devonté Hynes, and appearing as soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra, LA Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and on the main-stages of Carnegie Hall, the Barbican Centre, Sydney Opera House, Lincoln Center and BAM. As a recording artist, he is featured on Wild Up's Grammy-nominated third volume of Julius Eastman's music, and has also released  albums of music by Liszt, Robert Palmer, and of his own original work. He recently commissioned 16 new pieces using the entire inheritance left to him by his father after his unexpected death, with works by Laurie Anderson, Nico Muhly and Missy Mazzoli, among others, as part of a program called Inheritances, a New York Times Critic Pick described as "not only a display of contemporary compositional force, but also a true show...emotionally involving...with a sense of true dramatic stakes." Inheritances will appear on a forthcoming album on the New Amsterdam label. As Green-wood Cemetery's 2023/2024 Artist-In-Residence, Tendler has a site-specific installation, Exit Strategy, open through summer 2024. He also recently published his second book, tidepools. Adam Tendler is a Yamaha Artist and serves on the piano faculty of NYU.

Chris Casey is a ceramic artist based in Albuquerque, NM. His work has been shown widely across the US and his Instagram page is a rich resource of ceramics process videos.

Under the alias Daedelus, Alfred Darlington has been an instigator of electronic music culture for the past 20 years. A fore-figure of Los Angeles' Beat Scene they have released over 20 LPs, countless EPs, remixes, and additional productions on labels such as Ninja Tune, Brainfeeder, and Anticon. As a performer they're synonymous with performative controllers, from working with the Monome to current explorations of modular systems into DJ metaphors, and have played over 1,000 shows on 6 continents at venues ranging from the underground Low End Theory to festival mainstages such as Coachella.

Now a founding faculty member for the Berklee College of Music in Boston of their new EDI (Electronic Digital Instrument) program.

Daedelus has begun to live up to their Greek mythological namesake.

Diego is the Graphic Designer and co-founder and Director of Innovando la Tradición and has been interested in the social and ethical dimension of design and its power as an agent of change. Diego holds a Master in Type Design from one of the best schools in world for Typography, The Konickleink Academy of Art The Hague in The Netherlands. In addition, Diego holds a Postgraduate in photography by the School of Active Photography in Mexico, a Fine Arts Postgraduate Diplomaet by Konstfack University in Stockholm, Sweden and a Diplomaet in Narrative Techniques by Colectivo Practicas Narrativas in Mexico City. Diego also teaches across many universities in Mexico and previously ran the Workshop of Utopias at the Universidad Iberoamericana which prepared students to challenge the conventions of contemporary society and design practice.

Bianka Groves is a potter in Santa Fe & her work is represented all across the United States. She is a graduate of George Washington University’s Corcoran College of Art & Design in DC. Bianka has studied all over the country & taught ceramics at Baltimore Clayworks, Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, & Santa Fe Clay. Her pottery is thoughtfully functional and has the ability to complete the elegance of any interior space. The polished composition of her porcelain surfaces are an ode to the simplistic repetition and studies of simple design, architecture, and landscapes. When she’s not making pots out of her home studio in Santa Fe, you can find her teaching ceramic classes or out hiking in the desert with her dogs.

Kara is a lover of artistic expression. She believes in the power of a well-crafted story, especially the stories that lifts up the spirit and makes us want to be truthful, heroic, humble, more humane. While Kara has wandered into and wondered about many other creative mediums, performance has been a life long companion and teacher.  She has performed on stages, in galleries, in coffeehouses, and on street corners.  Many of these performances have been scripted, but more have not. The unscripted, live wire ones is where the sublime is found for her - following the constant shifting fluid state of being. Along with being a performance artist and holding a BFA in Photography and Digital Media, Kara has been a practicing massage therapist for over a decade.

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Lindsay Locatelli grew up in a family of artists who ranged from a clothing designer, musician, painter, illustrator, potter and furniture maker. Lindsay is interested in engaging her audience through adorning the body and the tactile experiences of wearing art jewelry. Her pieces are created solely by hand by using a wide variety of materials and techniques with polymer clay being the primary medium.

Andrea is dedicated to the work of contemporary Native American artists and the Native American fine art field. She has over thirty years of experience in the field including National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., as both special assistant to the director and exhibition developer/project manager, the fine arts coordinator/curator for the city of Tempe, executive director of ATLATL, Inc., a national service organization for Native American arts, the founding manager of the Berlin Gallery at the Heard Museum, and the membership and program manager for the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. More recently she was the Chief Curator at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian. She serves on the board of directors for the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, Santa Fe Indian Market and Voices in Contemporary Art (VoCA). She is on the Native American advisory board for Nest.

Illustrating wildlife and wilderness of the high desert of New Mexico, Kat Kinnick works to inspire a culture of fondness & connectedness to nature. She’s inspired by the magic & inexplicable qualities of childhood and is drawn towards expressing playfulness and curiosity with a folk art aesthetic. Her work is a celebration of the unique ecology in New Mexico, and it’s abundant diversity. Kat mostly works as a painter/illustrator, printmaker and ceramicist. Born in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, New Mexico, her parents, both having backgrounds in craft & design, ran their own business restoring and appraising Navajo rugs. She received a BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture with a concentration in Sustainability & Social Practice at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, Maryland, and currently lives near Lone Butte & the Cerrillos Mountains, south of Santa Fe.

https://hechoamano.org/artist/kat-kinnick

I’ve been working in clay for 24 years, and all this time, wheel throwing has been my obsession. I delight in making a series of pots which feel related like family, and I vacillate between black and white work and exploring color. I have a background in painting, and I have always been an athlete, both inform my ceramic work. More recently I have been exploring functional vases and bowls, but function has never been my main interest. I see the clay as a primal source material in which I can express whatever I desire, and creating functional pots isn’t always my intent. Creating ceramic objects that hold mystery, individuality, and a sense of the sacred is my goal.

https://hechoamano.org/artist/heather-bradley

Sydney Cooper was born in the 60's in Los Angeles, California - the child of a Japanese and Jewish family. In one neighborhood she lived in as a teen there were families newly arrived from Vietnam, Marines from a nearby military base, long time Mexican Californians, newly arrived Mexican and central American immigrants, Low-riders, Surfers, Military families of Vietnam veterans, Bike gang members, Mormons, Samoans, and that was just on one street!

This lineage and the question of how cultures, time and place intersect has influenced her longtime interest in ideas of the hybrid, cross-disciplinary practices, and the way our cultural and historical origins create distinctive ways of being. Sydney studied on the east coast further broadening her influences and received a degree in liberal arts at Bennington College in Vermont. Since then Sydney has lived in San Francisco, Paris, New York, Woodstock, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Chimayo and Santa Fe New Mexico.

www.sydneycooper.com

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and surrounded with the arts from an early age, Daniel McCoy (Muscogee Creek/Potawatomi) was welcomed into a household of Artisans, Farmers, Music and Subculture. McCoy began entering Native Art Competitions at age fifteen under the direction of Cherokee Artist, Mary Adair while attending boarding school in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. He received his formal Art Training at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. At the Institute, Daniel McCoy jr. was able to study and work with some of the best Native Artists in the field.

https://hechoamano.org/artist/daniel-mccoy

Leia Zumbro is a jewelry artist living in St. Louis, MO. In addition to showing at Hecho a Mano, her handcrafted jewelry is available widely across the US.

https://leiazumbro.com/

Les LePere is an artist from Harrington, WA. His work is on the covers of Tom Robbins books and in the collections of Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Boston Art Museum, LA County Art Museum, and others.

https://www.pencilfarmstudio.com/

Becca Grady (she/they) is a queer writer, photographer and artist. She is currently working on an environmental memoir about running and hiking through climate change in the Southwest, an excerpt of which was recently chosen in the Open Mountain Competition at the Kendal Mountain Literary Festival. Becca’s writing has also been published in Perverse, Ecology and Action Magazine, and Composite Arts Magazine. Her photography has been commissioned by the Center for Biological Diversity and featured in Grist.org. They have exhibited artwork across the US and internationally in Sweden, France, and Norway. 

https://www.beccagrady.com

Jason Garcia is a contemporary Native American artist in the United States, who was born in Santa Clara, New Mexico. His work has been exhibited the Smithsonian in Washington D.C, the Heard Museum in Phoenix, the Palm Springs Art Museum, and many more.

https://okuupin.com/

Matt King (1984 – 2022) was an American artist and co-founder of Meow Wolf, where he worked as senior vice president of creative direction until his death in July 2022. A native of Arlington, Texas, King was based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Benjamin Muñoz is a Dallas-based multi-disciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, installation, and monumental printmaking. Muñoz grew up in the vibrant Chicano culture of Corpus Christi, Texas, which boasts the country's largest Day of the Dead celebration, lowriders shows, and unique food culture. The middle child of artist brothers, Muñoz found his voice by reflecting on his heritage, upbringing, and current surroundings.

https://www.benjaminmunoz.com/

Paula Wilson is an African American "mixed media" artist creating works examining women's identities through a lens of cultural history. She uses sculpture, collage, painting, installation, and printmaking methods such as silkscreen, lithography, and woodblock.

https://paulajwilson.com/

Mike Lagg is a self-taught woodworker whose furniture, buildings, sculptures, and kinetic pieces are engineered to move with the wind, body, sun, and hand. He works with hardwoods and recycled material to make pieces with refined craft and inventive recreation.

https://carrizozoarts.com/mike-lagg

Kara Duval is a massage therapist and dancer in Santa Fe, NM.

http://www.wisehandsbodywork.com/

Tricia English is a designer based in Santa Fe, NM. With a background in product development and business from the Melbourne School of Fashion, she has spent most of her life working in different areas of visual design as well as managed and operated businesses from start-ups to well-established entities.

Terran Last Gun, Saakwaynaamah’kaa (Last Gun), (b. 1989, Browning, Montana) is a Piikani (Blackfeet) citizen and visual artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Piikani of Montana are one of four nations that make up the Blackfoot Confederacy and are collectively referred to as the Niitsitapi (Real People). Last Gun’s work draws influence from color, shape, land, cosmos, cultural narratives, and experiences. He works with various media, including printmaking, painting, photography, and ledger drawing.

https://hechoamano.org/artist/terran-last-gunterranlastgun.com

Bob Ebendorf is an American metalsmith and jeweler, known for craft, art and studio jewelry, often using found objects. In 2003–2004, the Smithsonian American Art Museum organized an exhibition of 95 pieces, titled The Jewelry of Robert Ebendorf: A Retrospective of Forty Years.

Erin Elder is an artist, writer, and curator guided by interests in land use, experimental collaboration, and non-traditional modes of expression. Her research-driven projects take highly participatory forms, working with a broad definition of art to bring audiences into a direct experience of particular places.

https://www.erinelder.com/

Nina Elder is an American transdisciplinary artist, writer, muralist, and educator. Her practice is informed by science, field research, and social justice movements. Elder's research based processes result in realistic drawings, performative lectures, and video work. 

https://www.ninaelder.com/

Ian Kualiʻi is a self-taught interdisciplinary artist of Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) and Mescalero Apache ancestry working in murals, large-scale hand-cut paper, and site-specific installation. Ian fluidly merges urban contemporary art with his ancestral iconography and history, drawing from occult symbolism, Indigenous politics, and Native Hawaiian cultural practices. From a single sheet of paper using only an x-acto blade as his tool, Ian’s portraits and compositions are carefully rendered in hand-cut paper, blending boldly geometric traditional patterns with delicate lenticular linework. Ian describes his creative approach as “a meditative process of destroying to create.” https://www.iankualiiart.com/

Jared is a painter working and residing in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2015 and his BFA in 2009 from the Columbus College of Art and Design. 

Lauren Tresp is publisher and editor-in-chief at Southwest Contemporary. She has a Master of Arts in Humanities from the University of Chicago, where she studied Medieval and Renaissance Art History, and a Bachelor of Arts in Art History and History from UCLA. She also offers consulting services to artists and arts businesses at laurentresp.com.

This is the first episode, introducing A Creative Excuse!